Do You Want to Get Out of Here?
by kathiann
Summary: Trying to escape from her mundane and slightly depressing life, Grace finds herself drawn to a man in a bar who ends up not being who she thinks he is.Written for the Mentalist Big Bang over on LJ. WARNING: Major character death.


**Authors Note: **Written for the Mentalist Big Bang over on Live Journal. With a special thanks to miss_peg for the art and WeBuiltThePyramids for the beta.

**Do You Want to Get Out of Here?**

"Hi, I couldn't help but see you sitting here, all by yourself." The man leaned up against the bar next to the red head and smiled.

She didn't answer.

"There's a real party going on behind you. Lots of dancing. Care to join me?" He tried again, he was not one often turned down and it was bothering him that she wasn't even looking at him.

"If I wanted to dance I would be out there dancing. Now go away." She picked her drink up off the bar—from the looks of it something strong, but the man didn't know what it was—and took a long slow sip.

Shaking his head at the brisk manner that she answered him he spotted another woman who'd just sat down at the other end of bar and moved on, leaving the red head to finish her drink in peace.

The red head, for all her brisk mannerisms, was actually sad that he'd given up so easily. But she'd met one too many guys in bars like this who just wanted to find a drunk girl to spend the night with that she was less than eager to talk to someone who gave up so easily.

She shouldn't be here, not really. She wasn't even drinking that much. This was her only drink, a top shelf whiskey like her grandpa used to drink, mixed with soda and ice that was slowly melting and weakening the drink even more. She wasn't here to get drunk, she was here to forget, to pretend that she was a normal woman, that she hadn't been scared by a mad man playing with her heart.

She barely registered the man who sat down beside her, assuming that he was just another man after a quick score, another notch in his bed post.

"Scotch and water, straight up" he ordered. His voice was deep, gravelly almost, but in a pleasant way. Looking out of the corner of her eye she noticed that he was older than most of the guys in this bar by at least ten years, not that it was a bad thing. It was almost refreshing to see someone else in the bar that wasn't just here for a quick score. She knew she could always go somewhere else, but she liked the decorations of this bar. Slightly rustic, but modern at the same time. It was what attracted the younger crowd, despite the lack of a DJ. His face was relatively free of wrinkles, but his hair, a shimmery combination of brown and blond with just a hint of gray thrown in at the temples, betrayed his age.

She kept watch out of the corner of her eye as she nursed her drink. Most of the ice was gone now, but she didn't care. She didn't talk to the man next to her, and he didn't talk to her. When her drink was done, she signaled for the bartender to cash her out and turned to go. She looked at the man one more time, sitting there alone, not bothering anyone, and found herself sitting down again.

The bartender smirked and poured her another drink. She held it in her hands for a few minutes, letting the cold of the ice penetrate her hands. It made her feel alive almost, in a way that she hadn't lately. She took a sip, letting the smooth liquid slide down her throat. She didn't look at him, but spoke to him anyway.

"Come here often?" She asked behind her glass that was still up to her lips.

"That's the line you're going with?" His voice was low, still slightly gravelly and she could hear the smile in his voice.

"I get that one a lot, seemed like the one to go with." She still didn't look at him, though she wanted to.

"As a matter of fact," the man said, "I do come here on occasion." She could hear him turning on his bar stool to face her.

She looked over at him and smiled slightly. She'd been told that she had a flirtatious smile, though she'd not brought it out lately. "I've never seen you in here, though, to be fair I don't really pay attention."

"I know what you mean. It's nice to just not have to watch everyone every second of every day."

For a moment she thought that she'd made a mistake talking to him, that she'd interrupted his solitude like the idiot drunk frat boys often did with her. But she looked at his face, the kind eyes and knew that wasn't the case.

"My name's John."

"Grace."

They sat at the bar, sipping their drinks in silence for a few more minutes, giving each other sidelong glances over their glasses.

"How long have you lived in Sacramento?" Grace asked after a bit.

"Not long, about six months. You?"

"About five years." She paused. "I've liked it mostly. My work is good."

"Oh? What do you do?"

Grace shrugged, not wanting to tell him she was a cop, that didn't usually go over very well. Most men were intimidated by someone they perceived to be stronger than them. "I work as a consultant." This man didn't need to know what type of "consultant" she was. And it wasn't an outright lie, Jane basically did the same thing she did and he was a consultant. "What brought you to this town?"

"Sales. I move from here to there, following the trends. It's not the most glamorous job in the world, but it pays the bills."

"I know how that is." She took another drink. "I don't normally do this, but, do you want to get out of here?" Her voice had a note of hesitancy in it; the last man she'd picked up in a bar had been in college. It hadn't exactly ended well, but it had been fun while it lasted.

"Yeah, that'd be great." They both paid the bartender, there was no need for pretense, they both knew where this night was going to end.

"I know a hotel just around the corner," Grace said as they walked towards the parking lot, "nice, quiet, mostly safe."

"Mostly?" John said with a laugh.

"It's a hotel that doesn't mind last minute check-ins and isn't right off the highway, mostly is the best they can do."

"That sounds like a good deal. I'll follow you." They both got into their respective cars and Grace led the way to the Sand Man Motel. Though she'd never stayed there herself, she'd never once been called there for a murder or to speak to a hooker or pimp. She'd once put a C.I. up there when they were working on a case, the guy had told her that the rooms were clean.

They pulled into the parking lot and parked next to each other, Grace's large SUV blacking John's car from the view of the main office. "I'll get the room." Grace said, walking towards the office. John nodded his consent and leaned up against his car. It was a non-descript, medium sized sedan, dark blue, nothing really fancy. Had someone asked Grace later, she wouldn't have been able to tell anyone what the make or model was, or what the color was really. That wasn't important.

Grace glanced over her shoulder before pulling open the door to the hotel office, a bell jingled somewhere inside and she stood in front of the counter for a few moments before an overweight white man came out of a back office wiping his hands on his gray baggy sweat pants.

"Can I help you?" He asked, still chewing whatever had been on his hands.

"Yes, I'd like a room for the night." The man grunted and typed a few things onto a keyboard.

"Paying by credit card?"

"Um, yes." She opened her purse and pulled out her wallet.

"It's 100 bucks, check out times is by 11:00 tomorrow morning." She handed him her card and watched as he slid it through a machine sticking out slightly from under the desk. $100 seemed a bit much to her, but it was late and she knew the place was relatively safe and clean so she wasn't going to argue. The man slid a key card through another machine and handed it to her. "Room 205, up the stairs and to the right." He pointed out the door.

Before she could say anything the man walked back into the back room. Grace shrugged. She walked out the door gesturing for John to join her and walked up the stairs. John walked into the room first, Grace followed. She made sure the door was shut and the lock was slid before she looked at John.

"I really don't normally do this." She said, looking down at her feet, suddenly nervous. She didn't know why, it wasn't like the man with his days' worth of facial hair growth and piercing eyes wasn't attractive. She could easily see herself falling into bed with him; it was just a matter of getting there.

"I don't either." John admitted. He stepped up to her so that they were almost touching and reached out a hand to caress her cheek. She turned her face to his and saw a smoldering look in his eyes that made her shiver. She reached up and pressed her lips to his.

Their movements were smooth and unhurried. Nothing frenzied or impatient. It was as if they both knew that they had all night, that there was no rush. John backed Grace to the bed, laying her down and pressing his body on top of hers. Slowly he undressed her, peeling her clothes off her body as if it was a reverent task. It was completely the opposite that Grace would have expected in a situation such as this. He was kissing her body, moving his hands down her body, driving her crazy with his patience, his slow movements.

They said nothing, the only sounds were Grace's shallow breathing and the rustle of John's clothing. He was still dressed and Grace didn't really mind. His mouth, his hands, were doing things to her that hadn't happened in far too long and she was lost to his touches. Later, when she was lying like a puddle of warm jelly on the bed, she had the thought that she should really get him naked, but couldn't quite manage to move more than her arms just slightly, to motion for him to join her at the top of the bed. There was plenty of time for that later.

* * *

Agent Teresa Lisbon was annoyed. This was not all together unusual, but the circumstances that had prompted her annoyance were. Grace was late. The slender red-head was always on time for work, early usually, and never in all the years that she'd been her boss and Grace been more than five minutes late.

"Has anyone heard from Grace this morning?" Lisbon asked no one in particular.

A chorus of no's was the only response and she went into her office. She picked up her desk phone for the third time that hour and tried Grace's cell phone. Like the other times she'd called it rang through to her voice mail.

"Grace, when you get this message call me back." She didn't bother saying who was calling, she would know. It was already ten o'clock, and she was starting to get worried. It just wasn't like the young woman to be late for work, to not call, to not be in contact at all.

Lisbon leaned back in her chair, thinking. Grace had seemed a bit down lately, nothing out of the ordinary, they all went through periods where life just seemed like it was the same thing over and over with no change. They'd had a slew of grisly cases, and Lisbon knew that it could get to anyone. But Grace had seemed alright.

A small tight knot of worry wormed its way into her chest. Grace wouldn't do anything drastic, would she? What if she was sick? Lisbon grabbed her keys and jacket, shrugging it on as she left her office.

"I'm going out; I'll have my cell if anyone needs me." She called to her team who were all sitting at their desks, save Jane who was lying on the worn brown leather couch in the dim light coming from the windows.

"Lisbon!" Jane called, sitting up and chasing after her, catching her at the elevator. "Are you going to check on Grace?"

"It's just not like her to be late, or not answer her phone." She said instead of directly answering his question.

"I'll come with you, you know, just to be on the safe side." He stepped into the elevator with her and she rolled her eyes. She was happy he was coming, Lisbon didn't know what she was going to find at Graces' apartment and was glad for the company, not that she would ever tell him that.

Lisbon drove her car and they were silent on the way to Grace's apartment. It wasn't that far from the CBI building, Lisbon had been there a few times, once or twice to pick Grace up or drop her off for work when her car had been in the shop and once just as a friend. They'd had a girl's night in, with cheesy chick movies that they both already knew the ending too, even though they'd never seen the movies themselves. Chick movies like that enabled them both to just relax, there was no real need to pay attention to a plot, or worry about missing a key scene if they went to grab more popcorn or another drink.

"What are you thinking about?" Jane asked as they neared Grace's apartment.

"The last time I was here, the only time that I've ever been inside Grace's apartment was for a movie night. We watched cheesy chick flicks and drank wine. It was nice. We should have done it more than just the one time, but work always seemed to get in the way. Then there was the whole thing with Red John…" Lisbon let her voice drift off as they pulled into the parking lot of Grace's building. Her apartment complex was not large, just two stories, and all outside. The parking was situated around the building and there was a gate to a central courtyard where the apartments were.

"Her car's not here." Jane said unnecessarily. There were very few cars in the parking lot, mostly just small beater cars that looked like they probably belonged to college students who were working their way through school instead of having mom and dad pay for it.

"Maybe she had car trouble and just didn't think to ask for a ride to work this morning." Lisbon said, though she knew that wasn't the case.

She parked in the marked visitor spaces and they both got out of the car. Graces' apartment was on the second floor towards the back of the courtyard. They walked around a gated pool and up a flight of stairs. There was a man, about twenty-five, leaning against the wall a few apartments down from Graces smoking. His hair was disheveled and he was wearing a pair of ratty looking plaid pajama pants like he'd just rolled out of bed and came out for a cigarette before doing anything else.

Glancing at him to remember his face Lisbon knocked on Grace's door, hoping that there would be an answer; that this whole thing with Grace could be cleared up simply. Maybe her alarm just hadn't gone off. Lisbon knocked on the door and waited a few seconds before knocking again.

"She's not here," the man from down the hall called.

"What?" Lisbon asked, turning to him.

"The hot red head. She never came home last night." He took a long drag off his cigarette and looked at Lisbon and Jane with a look that bordered on smug.

"How do you know that? Are you stalking her?" Jane asked in his usual manner.

"What? No. I don't do cops. Nah, she hated my smoking, would always come out and rag on me. Last night, not once. I thought she was out of town for work or something, though usually she takes a bag with her when she goes."

"And how do you know all that?" Lisbon was getting an odd vibe off the man, and while she couldn't "read minds" like Jane, she could read people fairly well. She had to or she wouldn't have made it this far in law enforcement.

"I'm a graphic designer. I'm home all day. I observe things." He took another long drag off his cigarette and blew the smoke up out if his mouth. Lisbon watched as the smoke hit the overhanging roof and lingered. The smell of smoke had permeated the whole area, and even though the man was a decent distance away, Lisbon could imagine that the smoke and the man's indifferent attitude would have bothered Grace.

"I'm in!" Jane called from behind her and Lisbon spun around to see Jane, hand on Grace's door knob smiling.

"Jane! You're not supposed to do that!" She was yelling, or rather talking at him in an angry tone.

"You don't mean that, you wanted in as much as I did." He pushed the door open and gestured for her to enter.

"That is not the point." She growled as she walked in. She stopped just inside the door, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light. Nothing looked out of place from what she could remember of the only time she'd been there.

"Doesn't look like anything's wrong." Jane said, standing too close to Lisbon.

Lisbon just nodded. She put her hand on her gun, a protective gesture she barley realized she was doing, and walked further into the apartment. It was only one bedroom and a very simple floor plan. The door opened into the living room, the front half of the apartment was split, living room on the right, kitchen on the left. At some point, someone had renovated the apartment and attempted to open the kitchen slightly by removing part of the wall that separated the kitchen from the living room. It didn't do much to make the kitchen that was no bigger than a hallway any bigger though. Lisbon looking over the counter and then around the doorway of the kitchen, just to make sure Grace wasn't passed out on the floor. She refused to think about anything other than her just being sick.

They walked towards the back of the apartment. The bathroom was on the left and shared a wall with the kitchen and the bedroom was on the right. Lisbon glanced into the bathroom, nothing seemed amiss. There were beauty products on the counter, the shower curtain was open and the towels were hung up neatly. There didn't seem to be anything out of place in the bathroom either, at least, as far as Lisbon could tell. The door to the bedroom was shut and she took a deep breath before turning the handle and pushing it open. She didn't realize that she'd been holding her breath until she let it out in a large whoosh of air.

Grace's suit from the day before was lying on the unmade bed. The closet door was open, showing a line of similarly colored dark suits hanging among a smattering of brightly color tops and a few pairs of jeans. Though slightly messy, it didn't look like there had been a struggle or anything like that. Just someone who didn't have time to make sure that the one room no one was likely to see was perfectly picked up.

"She's not here." Lisbon said disappointment evident in her voice.

"That is what the stalker said." Jane was standing with his hands clasp behind his back, rocking back and forth on his heels. His eyes were skirting around the room, not settling on anything for longer than a few seconds.

"I'm going to try her cell again." Lisbon said, pulling out her phone. Grace's number was the first one on her list of recent calls and she pushed the send button. Impatiently waiting for the call to connect. The phone starting ringing in Lisbon's ear the same time as the skirt on the pants on the bed started to vibrate and ring.

"She didn't take her phone with her." Jane said unnecessarily.

"Maybe she went out and just didn't want to be bothered with work?" Lisbon suggested.

"We could ask stalker boy outside." Jane suggested.

Lisbon nodded and headed out of the room, stopping only to grab Grace's cell phone out of the pocket of her pants from the day before.

Stalker boy, as Jane had called him, was leaning on the railing looking down over the court yard, a fresh cigarette in his lips and a mug of what was probably coffee in his hand.

"Told you she wasn't home," He called out when he noticed Jane and Lisbon coming towards him. He took a drag of his cigarette and held it between his fingers.

"Yeah, you said that," Lisbon agreed in a tone that insinuated that he knew a lot more about where Grace was than he let on.

The man straightened and raised both hands into the air, waiving his coffee and cigarette in a show of innocence. "Hey, I may watch what she does from the hallway, but I don't follow her around and I would never do anything to her."

"Oh, we know you'd never have the courage to do anything, you're just a sniveling coward, hiding behind your cloud of noxious fumes. All we want to know is if you happened to see when she left yesterday." Jane asked, being both insulting and threatening at the same time.

"Um," he looked at Lisbon whose hand was still on her gun and then back at Jane, "She left around 8:00, dressed up all nice, like she was going out. Not too fancy, but definitely not going to work."

"Any idea where she went?" Jane asked, taking a half step towards him. Though Jane didn't look intimidating, the man still swallowed hard.

"There's a bar a few miles from here. Not very big, popular with the yuppie crowd. She goes there sometimes, if I had to guess I'd say she went there."

Jane nodded and Lisbon glared at him one more time before speaking. "If we find out that you knew something and didn't tell us…" She let the threat hang in the air. When the man didn't say anything else she turned and walked away.

She waited until she and Jane were seated in the car before speaking. "Maybe she met someone and went home with them? Without her phone she might not know what time it is." There was a distinct hint of wishfulness in her voice.

"Maybe she's still there." Jane responded and Lisbon just rolled her eyes.

They sat in the parking lot for a few more minutes while Lisbon looked up the location of the bar on her phone. It didn't take them long to get there. The parking lot in front of the bar had only a few cars in it, none of them belonging to Grace. Lisbon parked the car and was out almost before she'd managed to turn it off. She didn't know if Jane was following her or not, she just made for the entrance. The open sign was off, but the door still opened and she walked into the dimly lit space towards the bar.

There was a man surrounded by stacks of receipts and invoices behind the bar who didn't look up when he heard her coming towards him.

"Unless you've got a package for me to sing for I'm not open 'til after noon, so you'll just have to come back then." He said, his voice clearly weary as though he was used to having people coming into his bar early.

"CBI," Lisbon said pulling her badge from her pocket and waving it in front of the man's face causing him to look up.

"What can I do for you?" He asked; putting aside the papers he was working on.

"We're looking for a woman who might have been in here last night."

"Um, ok. I was here last night, but it was pretty busy. It's amazing how many of the college kids come down here on Thursday nights." Lisbon pulled out her phone and brought up a picture of Grace from a recent crime scene to show the man.

"Oh, yeah. I know here. She's in here not infrequently. Maybe two or three times a month. Always sits by herself, spurs the advances of all the guys who try to hit on her. Pretty quiet, doesn't drink much."

"Was she here last night?" Jane spoke for the first time. Lisbon glanced at him; she hadn't noticed him coming in behind her.

"Um, yeah, she was. There was a guy who was trying to it on her, but she turned him down right off." He looked at the picture on Lisbon's phone again, thinking. "Is she in trouble?"

"No, she's a CBI agent, she seems to have gone missing, we're just tracking her movements the past few days." Lisbon said, trying to make the situation sound inconsequential.

The man was silent for another minute before speaking. "There was another guy. He sat next to her at the bar. There was something about him…They may have left together. It's odd because she doesn't usually talk to any of the guys in here."

"Did you recognize him?"

"No, sorry. And he paid with cash." He added when he saw her looking at the pile of receipts.

"Any chance you've got security cameras that might have picked him up, or picked up the parking lot?" Lisbon asked, mentally crossing her fingers.

"Actually, I do." He led them towards a tiny back office that was more of a broom closet and pointed towards a computer set up at standing height on a shelf.

"Everything's digital, if you want to look back at last night's footage you just need to call up the time stamp. It's filed by day and hour on the desk top. I've had problems with frat boys giving girls a hard time so I upgraded to a slightly better system. It tends to keep the trouble away."

After making sure that they had everything they needed he left Lisbon and Jane to comb through the footage from the previous night. They used the information from the man at Grace's apartment as a starting point and found that she was sitting on a stool at the bar at nine o'clock the night before. The watched the scene in double time. They saw the man who had tried to hit on Grace get turned down, and the saw another man sit down beside her. His face was hidden by the camera.

The slowed to footage and watched as Grace started to get up to leave and then changed her mind and sat back down to order another drink. There was a brief exchange with the man who was sitting next to her and then they both got up and left. Lisbon switched to a view of the parking lot and saw Grace get into her car and drive off followed by what they assumed was the man in his car, though they didn't see him get into it. Though the black and white footage was rather clear, they couldn't make out a license plate.

"I think he removed his license so we couldn't run it." Jane said after they watched both cars disappear down the street for the tenth time.

"I don't like that." Lisbon said staring at the empty street on the screen in front of her. "Where could they have gone?"

"Well, they didn't go back to her place, and they didn't go back to his place because she was the one leading…maybe they went to a restaurant or somewhere else?"

Lisbon restarted the footage from when Grace got into her car and watched it again, in half time, trying to see anything that they hadn't before. As she watched as Grace drove slowly across the screen a thought struck her.

"They went to a hotel."

"How do you know that?" Jane asked, clearly skeptical.

"Oh come on Jane, I'm surprised you didn't think of it. She meets a guy in a bar. She's not going to take him back to her place, there's too much risk for that."

"Right." Jane said, catching on, "She's too smart to take a guy back to her place; everything in her training tells her that it's just a bad idea. So, she tells him she knows a hotel nearby that won't ask too many questions and they head off."

Without having to say anything they quickly leave the bar, calling thanks to the man still behind the bar and getting into the car. They drove down the street in the direction that they watched Grace drive in the security footage, hoping that they could find where she'd gone just by driving down the street. As the came to an intersection Lisbon slowed down, even though the light in front of them was green.

"I think I knew where she'd have gone near here." She made a sharp left and sped up a bit. "There's a hotel just about a mile from here that we've used in the past when we've needed to put up CI's. They aren't right off the freeway, so they are a bit less expensive than your typical hotel, and they don't really care who they rent a room to as long as you can pay."

She pulled up to a hotel that looked like it had been remodeled in the last ten years, but still managed to look dated at the same time. Graces car was parked in front near the office. They parked next to it and got out of the car.

They were about to go into the office when a scream pierced the air. Looking around quickly they saw an open hotel room door that had a house keeping cart outside of it where the screaming was coming from. Lisbon ran up the stairs, not caring if Jane could keep up, a sense of dread settling into the pit in her stomach.

She slid to a halt outside the open door. The screaming had stopped but she could still hear a panicked mumbling that could have been a prayer. Stepping into the room she stopped dead in her tracks so fast that when Jane came up behind her he ran into her, almost causing her to fall.

The sight that greeted them was one they had seen before and always dreaded seeing again. On the bed was the prone body of a young woman, blood was everywhere, and on the wall above the bed where a cheap landscape painting had hung, was a smiley face drawn in dark red blood.

If asked later, Lisbon wouldn't have been able to say who moved first. Who made the call to the rest of the team to let them know what had happened. She wouldn't have been able to tell anyone who it was that found the letter laying on the small table. Addressed, not to Jane as would be expected from Red John, but to her. But she could tell you what it said. From memory. It was something that she would never forget.

_My Dearest Teresa Lisbon,_

_I've long followed you and your team. Mr. Jane, of course, was what first drew me to you. But I have grown to love each of you in my own way as the time has gone on. I've watched from afar and have been distressed at the pain and sadness in dear Grace's life. I know that some might say that I am the cause of it, but I do not control the heart. I couldn't bear to see her in such misery. I knew that I needed to help her. I do hope that you appreciate the help that I have been to her, and I'm sure you as well._

_Your friend,_

_Red John _


End file.
